NAME

lexgrog - parse header information in man pages

SYNOPSIS

lexgrog [-m|-c] [-dfw?V] [-Eencoding] file ...

DESCRIPTION

lexgrog is an implementation of the traditional “groff guess” utility in lex. It reads
the list of files on its command line as either man page source files or preformatted
“cat” pages, and displays their name and description as used by apropos and whatis, the
list of preprocessing filters required by the man page before it is passed to nroff or
troff, or both.
If its input is badly formatted, lexgrog will print “parse failed”; this may be useful for
external programs that need to check man pages for correctness. If one of lexgrog's input
files is “-”, it will read from standard input; if any input file is compressed, a
decompressed version will be read automatically.

OPTIONS

-d, --debug
Print debugging information.
-m, --man
Parse input as man page source files. This is the default if neither --man nor
--cat is given.
-c, --cat
Parse input as preformatted man pages (“cat pages”). --man and --cat may not be
given simultaneously.
-w, --whatis
Display the name and description from the man page's header, as used by apropos and
whatis. This is the default if neither --whatis nor --filters is given.
-f, --filters
Display the list of filters needed to preprocess the man page before formatting
with nroff or troff.
-Eencoding, --encodingencoding
Override the guessed character set for the page to encoding.
-?, --help
Print a help message and exit.
--usage
Print a short usage message and exit.
-V, --version
Display version information.

EXITSTATUS

0 Successful program execution.
1 Usage error.
2lexgrog failed to parse one or more of its input files.

WHATISPARSING

mandb (which uses the same code as lexgrog) parses the NAME section at the top of each
manual page looking for names and descriptions of the features documented in each. While
the parser is quite tolerant, as it has to cope with a number of different forms that have
historically been used, it may sometimes fail to extract the required information.
When using the traditional man macro set, a correct NAME section looks something like
this:
.SH NAME
foo \- program to do something
Some manual pagers require the ‘\-’ to be exactly as shown; mandb is more tolerant, but
for compatibility with other systems it is nevertheless a good idea to retain the
backslash.
On the left-hand side, there may be several names, separated by commas. Names containing
whitespace will be ignored to avoid pathological behaviour on certain ill-formed NAME
sections. The text on the right-hand side is free-form, and may be spread over multiple
lines. If several features with different descriptions are being documented in the same
manual page, the following form is therefore used:
.SH NAME
foo, bar \- programs to do something
.br
baz \- program to do nothing
(A macro which starts a new paragraph, like .PP, may be used instead of the break macro
.br.)
When using the BSD-derived mdoc macro set, a correct NAME section looks something like
this:
.Sh NAME
.Nm foo
.Nd program to do something
There are several common reasons why whatis parsing fails. Sometimes authors of manual
pages replace ‘.SH NAME’ with ‘.SH MYPROGRAM’, and then mandb cannot find the section from
which to extract the information it needs. Sometimes authors include a NAME section, but
place free-form text there rather than ‘name \- description’. However, any syntax
resembling the above should be accepted.